


Not Even Passed

by BobRussellFan



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: FixitFic, fragment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:41:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24990217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BobRussellFan/pseuds/BobRussellFan
Summary: Avatar Korra advises her successor.
Relationships: Korra/Asami Sato
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

The future 

"So you just let this happen? All those eons of history, gone just like that?" 

Avatar Xīng would not normally have asked an elder a question like that - but then this elder was also himself. Avatar Korra, in fit shape for a woman who had died at the age of 200, gave him a sharp stare. 

"There was a time, young Avatar, when I would have punched you in the stomach for asking that question. And a time before that when I would have broken down crying." She sipped from a cup of Northern Water Province tea, her form translucent in the light of Xīng's quarters. Xīng had prepared the cup themselves to help prepare the ritual; and had been glad that no other traditional Water Province dishes had been on the menu. A child of a more enlightened age, the thought of actually slaughtering and eating turtle-seal was...unpleasant. 

"Yes, well..." Xīng looked away. "I suppose I get into my share of fights too. And not just because of, uh, you know." The Avatar ran their hand over their smoothly-shaven head; which had been a deliberate fashion choice even before their military career. 

"You can just say Liǎng zhǒng jīngshén with me, you know," said Korra, her lips curving into a smile. "You're not the first Avatar who didn't fit into the same mold as everyone else. Believe me, I know that. Sometime see if you can find the first edition of Asami's book - the one with all the-" 

"But wait," said Xīng, brows furrowing, cutting Korra off before she had a chance to talk about how the first version of her late wife's autobiography had been "dirtier than a playtpus-bear's den!" before the government censors had gotten ahold of it. _Again_. They pointed with one hand, the other still in its glove. "But you said you mostly interacted with Aang when you were my age, and you hardly had a chance to talk to any of the others before the link was cut." 

"Before I _thought_ the link was cut," said Korra, smiling. "That was the secret, see. It was as if I had...oh, what is it you young people call it, your pocketphones? It was as if the one-" Xīng knew the name of the Water Province citizen who had nearly slain his predecessor and greatly weakened the Avatar's spiritual power, of course, but they had noticed Korra would not actually say it out loud. "had taken my pocketphone, erased all of my contacts, and broken it in front of me. They're all still there even if you lose the link. You just have to go find them again. That's what I did." 

"So if I want to track down every Avatar before you, all the way back to Wan, I have to go into the spirit dimension and find them myself?" Xīng's eyebrows raised this time. "That'll be - quite a feat. On top of everything else I have to do." 

"I know. I can make some recommendations about who you should try and talk to," said Korra, "but it's up to you. Some of them aren't even here anymore," she admitted. "Given the chance for final, true rest, they took it. I can't say I blame them." She smiled. "Some of us still aren't quite ready to go yet, though." 

At that moment, a flashing series of red lights erupted in the room's ceiling and a synthesized voice said "Spiritual incursion detected. Pilots, please report to Field A immediately." Xīng rose to their feet, military disciple instilled above all else, and said "I have to-" 

"-go?" Korra smiled, pointing to his head. "I know what you know, remember?" She was standing now too without having actually risen up, still proud and strong despite the great age she showed. "I'll be here. When you're ready." Xīng bowed once, quickly - the way he would to an aged member of his own family, and shot her a quick grin before running out of the room. 

\- 

Out on the field, Xīng earthbent after the rest of their squadron, surfing along on the edge of asphalt beneath their feet - as usual, they were the last one out. Well it would be a lot easier if Avatar training and pilot training weren't two different things! They landed just as the mission briefing was beginning, getting an annoyed look from the synthetic briefing officer before the latter resumed speaking. Xīng did their best to focus on the briefing at first - but when they realized how familiar this was, they let their gaze wander over the Firelord - such a beauty! 

All gleaming metal bent to remove all impurities, it towered as high as the lowest stories of an arcology above them, its humanoid shape belying the mighty weapons that lay within, forged by the great artisans of the Blue Lotus to battle forces both spiritual and physical. It was great and it was terrible, and when the "five fingers of the Firelord" were in their cockpits and bending within, it was all theirs. 

"-the borders to the spirit dimension are breaching! It is up to you, pilots of the Firelord, to take on these foul creatures before they can conquer us!" Xīng knew that this was a half-truth, that this was a breach natural as much as tactical, but the creatures from the other dimension _would_ do terrible damage to the great glowing mountain that was nearby Ba Sing Se - and that discussing the source of their own spiritual knowledge would put them at odds with Blue Lotus Command in ways they weren't quite ready for. "Recite the oath!" 

It was all very standard. "Today, at the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today we face the monsters that are at our door. Today, we take the fight to them. Today we are canceling the apocalypse!" 

Even Xīng joined their peers in raising their voice to the silent stars above, they thought - they knew these bonds would not hold them forever; Blue Lotus Command _would_ eventually discover that the new Avatar was one of their common soldiers, and that the "superstitious propaganda" of a previous generation was all too real. And then there would be war in Ba Sing Se, war as there had never been in centuries. 

Would their squadron stand with them? Ming, the Fire Province schoolgirl who had technically lied about her age to join the Service? Lao, the synthetic boy with the blue hair and the sad eyes? Captain Diem, who would probably find out the secret before all others? Finn, who liked to use his science to "find the truth" behind bending? 

They'd have to find out - after the world wasn't ending.


	2. Background

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Background material

Avatar Korra died about twenty years ago at the outbreak of the First Spirit War, sacrificing her life to protect Republic City from the first of the great Guàishòu spirits that have been invading the Earth ever since. 

Just past the age of 200, Korra was ready to go. In some ways she had never really recovered from her wife's death - Asami Sato having died at the age of 120 in the capital of the world government she and Korra had helped build.

There were no nations anymore by the time of Korra's death, with the partial exception of the Air Nomads - whose various temples have a relationship with the world government akin to what the Vatican City has with Italy. 

Xīng's time is the age of the Blue Lotus, a movement that rejected much of the old superstitions of the past - nationalism, spiritualism, bendism, all the things that once held humanity back have now been soundly put aside. 

This has had many wonderful consequences. The end of national borders has brought an era of unprecedented peace among human beings. A bender of Xīng's generation regards something like the Hundred Years War of Aang's time the way we might regard the Thirty Years War of the 17th century - a pointless conflict driven by divisions that no longer matter. With most benders serving the Blue Lotus cause (and thus the world state), they are neither rejected nor reviled. Global unity has brought a rapid expansion of technology. 

Xīng, growing up in Omashu (the first Earth Province city to become an arcology) has had all the information of the world at their fingertips right from the get-go. And much of this was Korra's idea. Having considered long how she was raised, and how Aang was raised, she decided that too many secrets (even with the best of intentions) would ultimately leave the next Avatar an outsider in the world her generation was building. So all of her secrets, all the stories of the Avatar now and the Avatar that was, have been freely available on the Infonet since the First Spirit War. 

Much of it, anyway. The Blue Lotus movement is one that believes in unity and equality - all are equal before the state, male and female, whatever their provincial origin, bender and non-bender alike. (They have even extended this to synthetic life - at least in theory) The Blue Lotus never quite knew what to do with the Avatar whose wife helped organize it - and who lent it her own support in her last few decades of life. 

(Things might have been different if Korra had taken a more active role, but she lived in seclusion for much of her time as a widow, and never looked too closely at how things were changing in the Blue Lotus.)

Korra's sacrifice prevented the destruction of Republic City - there is a statue of her today as big as the one of her predecessor in the harbor. (Indeed, all unknowing, the sheer power of her sacrifice convinced those who controlled the Guàishòu that this was not the time to invade the human world, and so they did not follow up on their initial sallies) But cities across the world burned in the First Spirit War even so; with the visible salvation coming from armies of benders and non-benders under the banner of the Blue Lotus. 

Officially the Blue Lotus will welcome the new Avatar when he or she comes, but the reality is somewhat different. The last Avatar failed in their eyes; why should a new one be any different? Only the great mechas - Firelord, Princess, Kyoshi Warrior, and the Sky-Bison - and those within can be trusted to defend the world from the outsiders in the spirit dimension. If a new Avatar emerges, it will have to be _theirs_ - just as everyone else is... 

-

The world of the Blue Lotus looks a bit like the world of a classic mecha anime. To be a pilot, or even a mechanic, is a highly romanticized job that many young people covet. (The Blue Lotus prefers younger pilots; they tend to ask fewer questions.) Most large cities have been converted into arcologies for both comfort and defense from the spirit invasions that have become commonplace in the last two decades. It's a world with high-speed rail and jetplanes, with computers and an Internet - though the latter is censored by the state. 

There have been voyages into space but there's not much there except star spirits, or rather "stellar creatures" in the parlance of the state. (They don't like to talk about what happened to the first voyagers to the Moon - perhaps that'll be a job for the young Avatar and their crew.) There have been voyages into the depths of the sea, where the "oceanic creatures" have been largely tamed. (Or so the state believes.) 

The Blue Lotus government should be written carefully. It is widely popular with most of the citizenry, particularly the educated classes, and officially would look like a paradise from someone from Aang's time - or even Korra's! Humans do not war against each other. Everyone can eat, everyone is educated, and no one dies from lack of medicine. Even the High Lama admits that the Blue Lotus has brought much to the world. 

But something is missing from the world too - something big...

**Author's Note:**

> Avatar: Xīng Genesis is the show they'll probably never make - the one that takes the setting's progression from "animeish fantasy" through "animeish dieselpunk" through "animeish giant mechs." 
> 
> There's just one big nation now - a nation whose basic technology looks a bit like your average giant mech-building civilization from 90s anime. 
> 
> But the tradition of that genre, the new government isn't quite what Korra and her peers had hoped when they helped build it; the Blue Lotus Republic has rejected much about the past. Perhaps too much.


End file.
